Railway control equipments, such as wayside signaling equipment, wayside crossing equipment, and wayside interlocking equipment, are individually controlled in a manner to assure that operation of the equipment is suitable for the characteristics and configuration of the application. For example, crossing equipment such as warning lights, warning bells and crossing arms are actuated at different advance distances of an approaching rail vehicle depending upon the speed limit on the railway and the configuration of the crossing, i.e., whether it is single or multiple track crossing and the speed of rail vehicles on the tracks. The control equipment typically includes electronic controllers that are programmed to respond to rail vehicle detectors and actuate the appropriate control equipment, such as by turning on flashing warning lights and lowering crossing arms. The controllers are also used with other wayside equipment such as railway switches to switch rail vehicles to other railways or tracks. The controllers may also control signal lights along the railway which indicate the presence of proximity of a rail vehicle with respect to a defined section or block of railway.
The controllers control the basic functions of the equipment, such as the basic operation of lowering and raising of a crossing gate, in response to programmed information stored in a program storage device such as an erasable programmable read only memory (EPROM) or electrically EPROM (EEPROM). The controllers have unique programs for each application in the form of the equipment to be controlled and the operating environment, such as a timing of a gate lowering upon approach of a train, which may be different depending on where the equipment is located within the railway system, the topography of the crossings, the nature of the railroad tracks (i.e., single or double tracks), the type and age of the equipment at the crossing, etc. Similar domain specific requirements are present for the other types of wayside equipment.
Each of the controllers generally include memory devices, such as EPROMs, for storing respective executive control information and application control information. Executive control information is associated with an executive circuit EPROM that may be programmed with control information common to all of a certain type of equipment, such as all crossing equipment. However, application control information is associated with an application circuit EPROM that typically needs to be programmed with a unique configuration program specifically tailored for a certain application, i.e., an application specific program. Consequently, each type of controller in a railway system may have the same executive EPROM, but each respective controller requires a uniquely programmed application EPROM tailored to a desired application, depending, for example, on how the controller is to be deployed in an installation in a railway system. In the past, quantities of EPROMs were programmed with application specific programs at the railroad company service depot and then provided to installers in batches. Installers of the control equipment, who are not programmers, with a selection of these pre-programmed EPROMs then have the task of picking an EPROM from the selection that has the right program for the specific application of the controller. The ability to make this proper selection is dependent on the information available to the installer to identify the particular EPROM that meets the application requirements. The physical size of the EPROM package limits the amount of written information that can be provided with the EPROM thus making it difficult for the installer to confirm that he/she has selected the correctly programmed EPROM for the particular application.